An
E-mail to David Warren by Douglas:
Re:
Salam Pax
Douglas
E-mail to David Warren, in response to his column
"Salam Pax" (David Warren, Ottawa Citizen/DavidWarrenOnline, 2003/05/14)
(Douglas/Watch, 2003/05/16)Mr. Warren,
Some of your observations are tantalizing but I believe your gravest conclusion is wrong on the face of it.
It seems clear to me that he is only a product of his class, not an agent, current or former, of Saddam. Would a Saddamist say this?
We Iraqis seem to have very short memories, or we simply block the bad times out. I ask them how long it took for us to get the electricity back again after he last war? 2 years until things got to what they are now, after 2 months of war. I ask them how was the water? Bad. Gas for car? None existent. Work? Lots of sitting in street tea shops. And how did everything get back? Hussain Kamel used to literally beat and whip people to do the impossible task of rebuilding. Then the question that would shut them up, so, dear Mr. Taxi driver would you like to have your saddam back? Aren’t we just really glad that we can now at least have hope for a new Iraq? Or are we Iraqis just a bunch of impatient fools who do nothing better than grumble and whine? Patience, you have waited for 35 years for days like these so get to working instead of whining. End of conversation.
The truth is, if it weren’t for intervention this would never have happened. When we were watching the Saddam statue being pulled down, one of my aunts was saying that she never thought she would see this day during her lifetime. (1) [emphasis added]
Furthermore, much of Salam’s behavior does not at all fit the profile of being an intelligence agent. If this were not the case, then Diana Moon wouldn’t have reached him “at work” and gotten a stern reprimand from “his boss,” as she claims (2). Furthermore, what business does a Saddamist have in befriending a staunchly pro-Israel, Conservative, Jewish commentator from from New York? By not challenging her pro-Americanism, isn’t he implicitly compromising his own goals (if those are his goals)?
Salam also once stopped blogging entirely following hurtful reader comments posted on his blog — hardly the reaction of someone “employed by Saddam’s ... spy and disinformation networks.” He has not expressed only anger at some of the more prominent exiles such as al-Chalabi and Makiya. He writes: “Pachechi was on all the Arabic news stations with interviews and talk shows. If it is a choice between him and Chalabi. I go for Pachechi.” (3) How popular is Pachechi among Mukhabarat?
Salam is definitely an insider but the evidence pointing to this does not support the incendiary statements you make about him. It is much more banal.
For example, you might have noted the following: no ordinary Iraqi could have the amount of leisure that Salam does while working as an architect, as he says he does. On page 133 of The Threatening Storm, Ken Pollack writes: "Professionals — engineers, doctors and professors — cannot afford to live on their salaries. Most have been forced to liquidate their savings and sell whatever assets they had just to pay for groceries. Many have quit their jobs to become manual laborers or taxi drivers, or to take other blue-collar work that pays much better than their former white collar jobs; taxi drivers were making roughly 130 times more than engineers in the mid-1990s." (4)
It is not only the fact that, as an architect living in Saddam’s Iraq, Salam could sit around and download MP3s all day which betrays him. Salam’s computer hardware, his ample access to broadband Internet, his satellite dish (the possession of which carried a two-month jail sentence) all immediately indicate that he had the assent of the authorities and lots of money (which required friends in high places). It would be very easy in Saddam’s Iraq to look up 29 year-old homosexual architect with a boyfriend from named Raed, a Shia mother from Kerbala and a Sunni father. — one who furthermore speaks German and English and constantly blasts Coldplay on his stereo. Easier still as many have said that using commonly available software one can trace Salam’s communications.
When the rumors started circling that Udayy had suffered a brain hemorrhage, he said he knew somebody who knew somebody who knew the doctor treating Udayy (no longer available in archives). His “reckless candor” was indeed extensive if one takes the time to gather together all the revelations he has made about himself on “Dear Raed” : the make-up of his family, his talents, his occupation, his sexual orientation, etc., even posting partial photographs of his face and sending packages to people abroad through the mail. It’s clear that there were never to be any consequences should he reveal himself, which, as far as his countrymen are concerned, he did do.
His familiarity with Uday’s doings is far too great to be innocent. This tidbit is enticing, for example:
In the early eighties the Iraqi Hunting Club had a new indoor swimming pool built. Quite big and state of the art. They decided to have some sort of a party to announce it’s opening. A nice classy affair. at around eleven Uday comes in with his entourage wearing a white tuxedo and top hat, there is still a photo of him in that tux being printed on calendars but without the top hat, has a couple of drinks, decides that the party is boring and to liven things up a bit commands everyone to jump into the swimming pool, and unleashes his dogs = bodyguards to push people into the pool. Has a good laugh and leaves, A fun guy eh? (5)
Salam is also able to tell us that “There is an incredibly strong rumor that Uday is in Russia (Belarusia)...” (6) and that the singer Nawal El Zoughby would appear at Udayy’s party celebrating his having survived the 1996 assassination attempt on him. (7)
He is quite obviously angered at the class that would supplant his own, as you say. A disturbing thing to note is that now that Saddam is gone, he still will not use his real name (as is the case with many bloggers). However, he did reveal it to Diana Moon who might have discovered his family associations had she tried.
And furthermore, Salam gave detailed accounts of protecting his father’s home from chemical attack (taping windows) and communicated with Diana Moon frequently in order to obtain Arabic pamphlets produced by the Israeli government for precisely this purpose. Anyone in Iraq’s military would not need this but someone living in the general vicinity of the powerful might.
I have had conversations with Salam in which I told him of my disbelief that his views could be representative of those of the majority. He didn’t have a chance to answer.
Which ultimately leads me to believe that when Salam is not lying when he says “I am not anybody's propaganda ploy, well except my own,” (8).
But he is also clearly innocent of your strongest charges — as innocent as any member of the elite under Saddam could have been.
Douglas
Notes:
(1) http://www.dear_raed.blogspot.com/2003_05_01_dear_raed_archive.html#200255082
(2) ibid.
(3) ibid.
(4) Pollack’s sources are Andrew and Patrick Cockburn, Out of the
Ashes: the Resurrection of Saddam Hussein (New York: Harper Collins, 1999),
pp. 121-123. Sarah Graham-Brown, Sanctioning Saddam (London: I.B. Tauris,
1999), p. 179-187. Youssef Ibrahim, “Iraq is Near Economic Ruin,”
The New York Times, October 25, 1994.
(5) http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/2002_12_01_dear_raed_archive.html#86511208
(6) http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/2003_03_01_dear_raed_archive.html
(7) http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/2002_12_01_dear_raed_archive.html#86261806
(8) http://www.dear_raed.blogspot.com/2003_03_01_dear_raed_archive.html#91126187
[Posted 2003/05/16]
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